June 9, 1973: Posse
One of the best local bands of the early 1970s and a springboard for a bunch of guys who would become even more illustrious. See the Footnote.
June 9, 1973
Posse Survives With a
“YOU KNOW,
it sure has changed,” the photographer asides.
He hasn’t been to what was a once-grander Miller’s – excuse
me, Bill Miller’s Riviera – on Old Lake Shore Road, this side of Angola, in
maybe 20 years.
Of course he’s caught it at a bad moment, what with guys
knocking out an old restroom and putting in a replacement so there’s more room
to dance.
And owner Pete Chudzik hasn’t gotten that old furniture yet
he says was thrown out when they re-filigreed Cole’s on Elmwood. So it may be
hard to tell, but things are looking up for this faded jewel.
“Was the ceiling this low back then?” The photographer
thinks a second. “Yeah, it was low.”
* * *
TWENTY YEARS AGO, however, it didn’t leak. Standing beside the band while it poured
outside on a Friday night was like having your upstairs neighbor’s waterbed
break.
The band sometimes laughs about the leaks. It’s just one of
those things, but still … “It even leaks when it isn’t raining,” organist
Ronnie Davis laments.
Today it isn’t. The sun burns. In the reflected dimness in
the middle of the floor, one of the guys working offers a sledgehammer and
singer Billy McEwen crumbles a restroom wall cinderblock with one swing. “Hey,
that’s fun.” Up on the roof, they’re looking for a leak.
The patio’s a good place to talk. Outdoor furniture
stubbornly enduring in the shade and a long crescent of bright beach with only
a few sunbathers winning a dare against the distant thunderclouds.
* * *
PETE CHUDZIK,
true to his unpredictability, buys a round of beers. “He’s never done that when
we’re playin’,” guitarist Doug Morgano marvels.
“Live Music Posse. Wed., Fri., Sat., Sun.,” the sign reads.
This band is the second Posse. Doug Kenney, now in
Before it broke up, the first one was playing bunches of
James Taylor and Kenney’s own writings – an album of which they once recorded
for Columbia Records, but then lost in negotiations.
“We used to play sitting down,” bass guitarist Joey
Giarrano sneers. “We didn’t work much.”
* * *
THE CURRENT POSSE is in its third summer at Miller’s. Billy and pianist Jim Ehinger had
played here several years back, the summer when Jim had three 18th birthdays.
It wasn’t long after they got together in June 1971 that Billy
was on the phone to Chudzik, asking if he needed a band. The reply: “OK, you
can start tomorrow.”
Some might attribute the recent popularity of Miller’s to the
whimsical shifts in youthful tastes at The Lake. After all, a few years ago the
WMU Club and the Big Ten were killing the place. Some might credit the band.
Posse knows what it takes to survive – have a good beat.
That old hard-working
“That
was the first
Drummer Rich Calandra’s roots go back to when the shuffle
was evolving, back to the time he played with two of the city’s rock pioneers –
the Burrano brothers in Sound Tradition and pianist Stan Szelest.
“I played with Corey Wells for five months,” he says.
“He’s
the guy who told Corey not to go to
“Stay
in
* * *
ANOTHER ROUND.
The bar’s run out of Canadian ale. Posse finds that most of the kids who come
to Miller’s don’t know the tunes they play.
“They’ll hear something a couple times here and then they’ll
dance to it,” says Jim Ehinger. “People won’t just like something. They need an
excuse.
“A lot of kids will come up and ask for a song they don’t
know the title of. They’ll hum the first few lines – da da da da da da.”
Joey Giarrano brings out his 14-year-old Precision bass for
admiration. He appreciates agile, punchy bass lines. They fit well in the
shuffle.
Solos rotate among Ronnie’s rhythm and blues organ, Doug
doing neo-blues riffs on guitar and Jim playing electric piano in that
flamboyant rock style that can be traced back to New Orleans.
* * *
BILLY McEWEN
has one of those high-pressure voices that’ll growl or curl. It was what won
the kids at Miller’s over to them that first summer, Billy singing Joe Cocker
songs, a success that still occasionally haunts him.
“We weren’t into Cocker,” he protests. “We only did about
three of his songs. That’s the way we are with most groups, we’ll only do two
or three of their songs.”
The group goes through a lot of songs. Worn out maybe 20
originals among them, Rich estimates. Everybody writes songs, good songs too,
like Doug’s “Mend My Ways,” a catchy rocker which could’ve been penned by, say,
the J. Geils Band.
Columbia Records has eight of their originals on a tape
somewhere in
“I’m just as glad they didn’t let them out,” Billy
declaims. “We’re better now. Like Stan Szelest says, first you’ve got to
duplicate, then imitate, then create. We’re kinda halfway between imitation and
creation.”
* * *
WE TALK
about Stan’s band breaking up, the appearance of hornman Eric Traub this week,
playing at Brink’s with Spoon & The House Rockers.
Traub, says Joey, who plays with Spoon on his free nights,
was overjoyed to find the roots of
“D’you meet Ned Doheny when he was here?” Joey asks. Doheny,
an L.A. songwriter with his first album just out on Asylum Records, came to
town a couple weeks ago to see where the inspiration came from among his
Buffalo backup men – drummer Gary Mallaber, keyboard men Richard Kermode and
Jimmy Calire and saxman Don Menza.
“Ned was pretty much amazed at the strength of musicians
here,” Joey says. “The way we do four or five sets and still go strong at the
end of the night.”
Posse goes inside to polish up “What’s Going On,” not the
Marvin Gaye original but the velvety, floating Donny Hathaway version.
“Hey, hit that on the two and the four,” Billy tells the
guy with the sledgehammer. Seven times they sail into it, finding a fairly
satisfactory groove, and seven times they stop somewhere after the first
instrumental break.
It isn’t sounding clear enough. They listen to a cassette
of Hathaway.
* * *
SOMEONE TAPS
a keg of beer on the patio. After picture taking, we talk about what a 16-track
studio will do (this before the tragic and unexpected death in
“I think everybody’s gonna hold up until something happens,”
Rich reckons. “We’re working steady. We’d like to record again. You know how it
is. Nobody knows when anything’s gonna happen.”
One reflects that
But here the workmen are. The walls are coming down. The
furniture’s coming in.
The sun gets hotter. Chudzik comes out to pour a bag of
charcoal in the grill for a barbecue. He looks abnormally satisfied.
“We,” he announces grandly, “got the roof fixed.”
The box/sidebar
Riding High
Posse has ridden together solidly for nearly three years,
the last change was the temporary departure of Doug Morgano to play with
guitarist-songwriter John Mahoney in summer 1971.
He was back two months later, bringing with him Ronnie
Davis.
While summers take them to The Lake, winters find them
headquartered on
The lineup:
Billy McEwen, 24, vocals, Seneca Vocational High School,
Army veteran, formerly with Storm Crow, Embers Blues Band and the first Posse.
Doug Morgano, 25, guitar and backing vocals, North Collins
High, attended UB, formerly with The Fugitives, Skull Street Train and Mondo
Bizarro.
Jim Ehinger, 21, electric piano, West Seneca High,
Ronnie Davis, 23, organ and occasional vocals, Bishop
Fallon High, attended UB, formerly with Skull Street Train and Barbara St.
Clair & The Pin-Kooshins.
Joey Giarrano, 22, bass guitar and backing vocals, Grover
Cleveland High, attended Canisius College, formerly with the Buffalo Beatles,
Sound Tradition and the first Posse. Plays regularly with Spoon & The House
Rockers.
Rich Calandra, 20, drums, Burgard High, attended ECTI,
formerly with Sound Tradition (five years) and the first Posse.
* * * * *
IN THE PHOTO:
Jim Ehringer in front. Behind him, from left, Billy McEwen, Doug Morgano, Rich
Calandra, Joey Giarrano and Ronnie Davis.
* * * * *
FOOTNOTE: Singer Billy McEwen is a pillar of
Guitarist
Doug Morgano became a Buffalo Music Hall of Famer in 1996, after doing stints
with Big Wheelie and the Argyle Street Band and touring for two years with
Martha Reeves and the Vandellas as music director, according to his Hall of
Fame bio. He also toured and recorded with Clarence Gatemouth Brown.
The BMHOF bio for Jim Ehinger, a 2007 inductee, notes
that he went to L.A. and did sessions and tours with an all-star list of
notables, including Bob Dylan and George Harrison. He was Dennis Quaid’s piano
coach for the film “Great Balls of Fire.” Before returning to his hometown, he
was in
Most of us these days know keyboardist Ronnie Davis as
LeeRon Zydeco. He formed his current band, LeeRon Zydeco and the Hot Tamales,
in 1993 and became a Hall of Famer in 2000. Back around the time of this
article, when I had an attic apartment on
Drummer Rich Calandra joined the
“Around 1976, I went into business with Rich Calandra,
a local drummer who had aspirations to be a record producer. The two of us
produced a number of local acts and, when there was studio time left over, we
would record Spyro Gyra. The band’s first album slowly came together in this
way.
“Rich and I met with little success with our efforts
with other groups, so we pressed 500 LPs of Spyro Gyra on our own label with what
little money we had left,. Within a year we had sold tens of thousands of
records, signed a record deal and launched the band’s career. …
“Rich and I purchased a turn-of-the-century stone
farmhouse just outside of NYC and converted it into my own recording studio,
BearTracks. This provided Spyro Gyra with a great recording environment. The
studio stayed active for more than thirty years.” Sadly, Rich died of
pancreatic cancer in 1986.
As for bassist Joey Giarrano, he’s been a stalwart on
the local scene for many years and shows up with bands at the Sportsmen’s
Tavern, sometimes with former bandmates from Posse.
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